The main theme of this article is ethnic music, the definition of the term and its brief history. This issue is important because many people confuse this concept with others, such as folk music and musical folklore.
World music
Ethnic music is called that way in the English-speaking world. When translating into Russian, in order to avoid confusion, it was decided to use the word, descended from the Greek root "ethnos". In the West, this concept began to be used from the 60s of the 20th century, when the musical culture of other parts of the world gained great popularity in Europe.
Another event that is associated with the creation of the new term was the appearance of the Grammy Award nomination, in which the award was presented to performers of folklore and contemporary works in folk style.
How is it in Russian?
In 1980, this term came to replace the notions of folk music and musical folklore that existed in the Soviet era. A new designation was required primarily for those works that are copyright, but written under the influence of national traditions.
So, ethnic music is a composition created by one or another people, or written by professional composers. These are also samples of musical folklore in processing.
Slavic ethnic music
It is known that folk music in any country of the world initially arises as songs. Since this genre does not require mandatory instrumental accompaniment.
The same can be said about the folklore of the Slavic peoples. Different types of Russian folk songs were vividly interested in nineteenth-century Russian composers. The pioneer in this area was Mikhail Glinka. He actively used folk motifs in his operas. This composer first began to talk about the need to study musical folklore. The following statement was widely known:
Music is composed by the people, we, composers, only arrange it.
After him, many domestic artists followed his example. Members of the famous association “The Mighty Handful”, among other creative plans, intended to write a series of operas based on subjects from Russian history and using the achievements of musical folklore. This task was completed, and the Russian classical repertoire was replenished with such masterpieces as “Prince Igor” by Borodin, “Sadko” by Rimsky-Korsakov, “Boris Godunov” by Mussorgsky and others.
In each of them there is ethnic music in processing. For example, in the last of these operas, Modest Mussorgsky, portraying a drunken runaway monk, uses the Russian folk song “As It Was in the City, in Kazan” as his aria.
Thus, we can say that ethnic music has always been present in the works of domestic composers.
One more important aspect of this issue should be mentioned.
Folk instruments
Ethnic music is also the means by which it is created. In Russia, the most well-known folk instruments have always been the hooter, harp, balalaika and domra. The last of them was undeservedly forgotten after the decree of Tsar Fyodor Mikhailovich on the ban on speeches of buffoons.
This document dealt a big blow to the ethnic music of the peoples living in the territory of modern Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. In addition to the comic song repertoire of vagrant artists, filled with humor on political topics, the instruments on which they played were also banned. As a result of such a law, domra was almost completely excluded from musical use for three centuries.
Instrument rebirth
Only in the nineties of the nineteenth century, when the Russian composer, arranger and musician Vasily Andreev created his first orchestra of folk instruments in the country, domra survived a rebirth. And it happened like that. During one of the folklore expeditions, Vasiliev discovered an unknown instrument, the body of which was in the form of a hemisphere. The musician restored it, as a result of which there was a domra in its modern form.
Elements of Slavic folk culture were used in their work by such composers as Antonin Dvorak, Frederic Chopin and many others. At the beginning of the 20th century, Stravinsky created for the series of Russian musical performances in Paris the ballet "The Rite of Spring", which was based on Russian folk melody.
From the Kuban Choir to the Aquarium
Speaking about ethnic contemporary music of our country, first of all, one of the oldest groups working in this genre should be mentioned - the Kuban Folk Cossack Choir. This ensemble has been around for more than two hundred years. His repertoire includes both old Cossack songs, the authorship of which has not been established, which means that they can be called folk, as well as the works of classical and modern composers, written in folklore style.
In Soviet times, in the vast vast multinational state, there were a large number of such choirs, as well as vocal and instrumental ensembles that included the song heritage of their peoples in their contemporary repertoire. Also in the musical arsenal of these groups were their own original compositions with elements of folk melody. An example is the Uzbek group Yalla. In their work, they used some musical instruments of the East, for example, sitar. And their compositions successfully combined the achievements of modern rock, pop music and songs taken from the huge folklore heritage of the countries of Central Asia.
The influence of folk art was not spared and Russian rock. In the late eighties and early nineties of the twentieth century, a number of songs appeared in the Russian spirit. As an example, one can cite the albums of the Aquarium group Navigator and Kostroma mon Amur, the compositions of which are dominated by Russian melody, and the texts are filled with images typical of epics and fairy tales: a bird, a sirin, a pure field, and so on. Based on the definition, we can say that the data of the song of Boris Grebenshchikov is ethnic music.
Foreign influence
It is also safe to say that such a choice of creative path was chosen by domestic musicians under the influence of their Western colleagues.
Even in the early twentieth century, pop musicians of Europe and the United States began to search for material for themselves in the music of non-English countries. Thanks to this, tango was very popular at that time. It began to be performed by jazz orchestras, some of which also included a drummer playing Latin American instruments, such as maracas, kong, bongos and others.
These innovations, in contrast to the drums and cymbals of the classic setup, received a separate name. They are now called percussion.
Today, not all music lovers, and even fans of Latin American dances, know that tango, before it penetrated Europe and the USA, had more than one century of history.
So, the works written in this genre in the twentieth century can be considered ethnic music in modern processing.
Blues - The Basics
The same can be said about jazz, which appeared as a result of the merger of Negro religious hymns and European musical tradition. And it happened like that. In the American city of New Orleans at the beginning of the twentieth century, there were many old wind instruments left over from the Civil War. Therefore, it was the game of them that taught the children of many black residents of this locality. When the musicians grew up, they realized that a brass band was able to perform not only marches, but also spiritual (church songs for the choir). So there was music, which was later called jazz. She came from chants composed by the people.
So, it can also be called ethnic music in modern processing.
Roughly the same thing happened with the blues, which hit the big stage from the cotton plantations of the southern states, where in their free time from hard work, blacks expressed their feelings in long songs to the accompaniment of a guitar or banjo.
Having gained popularity among a wide audience, this genre formed the basis of almost the entire American and European pop music of the twentieth century: from rock and roll and rhythm and blues to punk rock and hip-hop.
But on this creative quest in the field of ethnic music did not stop. For the first time in Western music, the Beatles used the Indian national instrument of the sitar in the song Norwegian wood.
Moreover, the influence of Celtic folklore is clearly traced in the melody of this composition. Thanks to such a combination of seemingly incompatible components, masterpieces often appeared, which were then ranked among the musical classics of the twentieth century.
Source of inspiration
European musicians traveled not only to India. For example, members of the Led Zeppelin group once went to Morocco to study the local song culture and the art of playing the instruments.
As a result, the music of the English collective was enriched with oriental rhythms and motives. Some critics call this group the most folklore of all representatives of rock music.
Another great story is related to the ethnic music of the Indians. Once members of the American duo Simon and Garfunkel heard a street musician playing a melody of unprecedented beauty. They immediately decided to include her in their repertoire. This song had Native American roots and came from Peru. It is called "Condor flew in."
One cannot but mention reggae music, which was also originally part of a culture that was exotic for a European listener. But, thanks to the enormous popularity of the king of this genre, Bob Marley in the 70s, she sounded not only in Jamaica, but in all corners of the world.
The children of this singer continue his glorious work.
Reggae today
Albums of Damian and Ziggy regularly get into the charts of different countries and receive prestigious awards. Thanks to them, as well as some other musicians, the reggae genre is not only alive today, but is in the next stage of prosperity. For example, English singer Sting recently released a joint album with Shaggy, a native of Jamaica.
From all the above, we can conclude that ethnic music is the main source of inspiration for many other genres.